Lagrange Points
by wickedwanton
Summary: Five points of balance, five people in the balance. Molly Hooper has secrets and he's all out of patches. Tale intended to pair with "Minimum Safe Distance" but can be read as a stand-alone.


There was an old superstition that said if you gifted someone a blade, they had to give you a gift in exchange or risk the sharp edge severing the relationship. Thus Sherlock Holmes was in possession of a box of Molly Hooper's Jammie Dodgers as he rode back to Baker Street.

After checking that his room was intact, if not unmolested, Sherlock settled in his chair, enfolded in seclusion. As much as he enjoyed talking things through with John, some things weren't ready to be shared. Uncertainty simmered, too much to admit to not knowing or understanding. He felt like he was sitting on a cloudy beach, watching the water pull farther and farther away, knowing the tsunami could come crashing in with deadly force at any time. What would the waves steal away now?

Boredom could make him stupid. He'd give into the impulse to create rows about anyone or anything. The last time Sherlock remembered not having this sense of jeopardy; he had been firing randomly at the hideous wallpaper in the living room, trying to get a rise out of John and failing on a grand scale. Oh, they had squabbled, but he had wanted at least a window rattling shouting match, a little chaos to break the monotony. Be careful what you wish for. The minute that his back was turned, chaos arrived with a staged gas explosion.

When he was younger, young enough to still be sneaking books past a disapproving older brother, Sherlock went through a brief fascination with science fiction. He read Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Heinlein, even Varley, cover to cover. Though interesting at the time, most of the details of the books faded. One concept that stayed with him was the Lagrange points, five locations where a balance existed between two different gravitational pulls capable of balancing an object between them. Science fiction writers seemed to love using those points as locations for space stations.

Sherlock had never given much thought to friendship, had never seen the point. The friendships he had observed seemed more like a pack mentality, smiling envy and daggers hidden behind a front of trust. Friends were to judge yourself against, out compete, outwit. He didn't need faux brotherhood to accomplish that. Friendship seemed destined to remain a foreign concept, until Mike Stamford walked into the lab with a wounded veteran looking for a home.

He had to admit John was his friend, had been almost immediately. John was less pretentious than any man he'd ever met. True, he'd been a bit unnerved when Sherlock did what others contemptuously called his "trick", but John had seemed interested, intrigued. Just the lack of paranoia had been a wonderful change of pace. John was naturally curious, which made him easier to talk to than most. John wanted to understand, and that alone was worth more than could ever be said. Besides, it wasn't everyone who would sit unashamedly beside a sheet wrapped, stark naked, furious consulting detective at Buckingham Palace without criticism, critique or hesitation. That had to rank higher on the friendship scale than even shooting a man with a handgun through two windows separated by a courtyard. Marksmen were easy to find.

Sherlock had come to rely on John to counter-balance him in the more emotional areas that were frequently a mine field, but there was something to be learned in the opposite direction. John was becoming increasingly upset, even disappointed by Sherlock's lack of empathy mid-case. It seemed strange on a doctor, but perhaps John had been sheltered, only treating wounds caused by a defined enemy. Inevitably, he would lose patients to far more insidious causes; diseases, accidents, misadventure. The hard lesson that all cannot be saved and harder lesson that you have to focus on the wound before the patient. Empathy had its place, he supposed, but it had to come once the killing stopped, or there would just be more to mourn.

John's observational skills were getting better all the time, but his occasional blind spots still puzzled Sherlock. Why had he never asked about the coat? John himself had seen Irene Adler go out the window wearing the coat, then the coat appeared back at Baker Street, yet it never caught his attention? He only owned the one, which John should have noticed when he searched the closets.

It was one of the reasons Sherlock left that embarrassing notice tone on his phone. He hoped John didn't believe he couldn't change or stop it. Unsure of exactly what Adler was up to, it seemed better to create witnesses to her attempts to text him. He was glad of it now that her supposed body had turned up. The texts would stop, assisting the illusion of her demise. John had actually counted the texts, but missed the return of the coat. It boggled the mind.

They were going to have to have a word soon about the blog. It had been uncomfortable for Sherlock at first, progressed to embarrassing, but had now moved into the dangerously ridiculous. John saw it as bringing in cases, but it brought in far more trouble than it was worth. Sherlock had tried to be subtle about his protests, but John dismissed it as being about that god-forsaken hat. He had already picked up a dangerous "fan" before the blog had even begun. It was far too large a liability. Something had to change.

This assumed they could have a civil conversation. Between John ransacking his personal property and Sherlock's gentle prod to get rid of Jeanette, it could be silent at Baker Street for days. It was hardly his fault. He had prided himself on his eavesdropping skills, but with the advent of mobile phones, he didn't need them much anymore. People simply forgot where they were while they discussed private matters, like New Years Eve dates. John was not destined for the midnight kiss.

At least Mrs. Hudson will appreciate the quiet. Putting up with him, she'd earned some. It was just so much fun to push her buttons! It could be done so delicately, without any of the risks that sometimes made him feel guilty with Molly. A messy kitchen, a few misplaced body parts and she'd be blushing and flustered, hands flitting around like trapped birds, threatened rent increases that never actually arrived. He couldn't resist it.

He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. There was very little he wouldn't do for Mrs. Hudson, yet he had inadvertently brought danger right to her door. It had taken him months of checking locks and installing a new security system to get past the first invasion; Carl Power's trainers. Someone, probably during the chaos of firefighters, paramedics and police after the "gas explosion", had spirited the trainers into the building as a message to him. If Mrs. Hudson had caught them at it, he might have gotten a very different message. He thought he had tightened things up, only to have The Woman breeze her way in at least twice. No security was ever complete, but he owed her better than this.

Then again, maybe he wasn't giving her enough credit. Mrs. Hudson was both stronger and smarter than she appeared. Unfortunately she had been born into that ridiculous time when women were expected to hide their intelligence and strength in order to attract a husband. He could see the truth in her sometimes, even when she was dealing with him. It was always a clear sign to back off. She would win.

She didn't speak often of the months leading up to her husband fleeing to Florida, but Sherlock had read the police reports. Her husband had been a heavy drinker and a brutal drunk. There were no hospital records but her complaints about her hip were suspicious. Somehow she had gotten through it and the husband could never touch her again. A lot of women were destroyed by far less.

Something in him wondered sometimes if Mrs. Hudson was what most people's mothers were like. There had always been layers of staff that stood between himself and his own mother. Biscuit making hadn't been her area. He wouldn't fault the woman who had birthed him, but there was warmth in knowing someone came up the stairs just to see if he was all right. Made him soup if he was sick. He smirked. Someone who didn't charge him for graffiti.

Sherlock was still irritated at Lestrade over the mess with Moriarty at the swimming pool. One of the few times he ever called for back up and Lestrade arrived late. It truly hadn't been his fault; Lestrade was hamstrung by labor and budget limitations, but after fourteen bodies, Sherlock thought the other man could find a way.

At least Lestrade listened to him. Without a direct connection with Scotland Yard, things would be far more difficult. What had made Carl Power's death so horrible for Sherlock was that it had been his first attempt at beating his head on a concrete wall of ignorance and oversight, trying to get someone, anyone to look at what was right in front of them. Appallingly, the excuse he got the most was a desire to avoid paperwork. A boy was dead, but a half hour in front of a typewriter was too high a price to pay. Of course, now he knew if he had gotten someone to look into the case properly at the time, Moriarty might have been stopped, possibly even still been in prison.

Increasingly, Sherlock felt Moriarty wasn't going to be Lestrade's problem. He wasn't certain that Moriarty was tied into the whole Irene Adler mess, because frankly, it looked a little disorganized for his tastes. He did believe Moriarty's web had grown too large for Scotland Yard. Lestrade may be able to help with some battles, but the war would be beyond him.

Perhaps it was just as well; the man had a war of his own brewing at home. Sherlock had seen the pattern before many times. Vows made to be forever, falling into nothing but inertia. The waltz between reconciliations and filing papers, complicated by the occasional added partners. It could take the rest of their lives to work it all through in private or in the courts. One thing he had to admit; Lestrade kept it out of the work.

Lestrade did go above and beyond the call of duty for him frequently. He tried more than any officer Sherlock had known to listen, not constantly interject irrelevant questions which delayed resolutions. Somehow, Lestrade put up with him. Then again, he put up with Anderson and Donovan, but at least he himself produced results. Could the sainthood of promotion be far behind?

Mycroft was becoming more intolerable every day. The whole distraction with the memory stick full of missile plans while Sherlock had been trying to keep people from being blown apart still rankled. Mycroft dismissed anything that wasn't a part of his own little private wars as somehow irrelevant, no matter what the stakes. The man seemed unable to accept that they were separate people, could go their separate ways. Sherlock had been trying to break away since the last true connection between them had severed with their mother's death. Why wouldn't Mycroft leave him alone?

Sherlock didn't chase sticks. He also didn't take orders from an older brother who fancied himself an incarnation of John Steed. He thought they had settled the orders issue very firmly, long ago, but now Mycroft was back to trying the tactic. Ordering him to look at some things and ignore others. It never worked before and it wasn't going to start now.

It was practically destined that Mycroft try going around him to John. Gave him a chance to heavily play the "Queen and country" card with a soldier. John had handled the initial conversation very well, even jabbing at the right points, but it caused problems later. Mycroft had made enough of an impression that John couldn't leave it alone. He kept interrupting over Mycroft's texts, his demands for progress on a problem that should have taken his own people less than a day. Meanwhile there was semtex to be dealt with. No semi secret service to deal with that. Didn't it count as domestic terrorism?

The Irene Adler mess was the final straw as far as Sherlock was concerned. Buckingham Palace or not, he should have simply gotten up and walked away. He had tried the stunt with the sheet just to goad Mycroft, only to have him dig claws in deeper. Alarm bells everywhere, yet Mycroft goaded him into taking the case. Embarrassing photos of royals were almost common place these days, but the crown's involvement gave Mycroft the cover to withhold far too much. It left Sherlock the only option of playing it straight, just as the case had been laid out before him, hoping the resulting mess could be cleaned up later. Besides, if he were being honest with himself, The Woman was sticking two blue veined fingers up at everything Mycroft claimed to represent. He wanted to see how it played out.

He'd been shot at, drugged, beaten, his home had been broken into, he had committed fraud and the mess seemed to be getting larger. Mycroft had warned him to stay out of it, but the notice tone meant he was still involved, whether he liked it or not.

He had suspected what was in the box on the mantelpiece, knew when he saw the phone she was trying to disappear. She was making him a conspirator. As long as he had the phone, he thought he'd play along, see where it led. Her best option would be to fake her death to throw off any pursuit. The call to Mycroft assured someone would be watching the morgues, but it came at a price Sherlock would never have guessed.

Mycroft located a body, and despite DNA tests, still wanted Sherlock to identify it. Strange, but in for a penny, in for a pound. When they pulled up at St. Bartholomew's, it gave him a shiver. He wanted the shockwaves farther from home than this. It wasn't until they walked into the morgue that he realized exactly what Mycroft was up to.

Molly Hooper was not supposed to be working, yet just as Sherlock saw her, Mycroft labeled the morgue at St. Bart's his "home from home". Mycroft never made threats, just demonstrated how things could be manipulated. Now Irene Adler's fraudulent death certificate had Molly Hooper's signature on it. Mycroft had involved her and there was nothing he could do about it.

Molly Hooper was an entire category of concerns all her own, but the events of tonight showed his preconceptions required some revisions. A small bit of hope from a shadowed holiday. A small mystery he hadn't expected.

Sherlock wished he could have seen her actual fight. What he could discern in the aftermath intrigued him, proved to him he must be missing something. Given the size of her attacker, she must have been ready before the attack began. She hadn't attempted to run; he would have had a speed advantage. Her weapon choice was perfect; a knife for a pathologist used to wielding blades to cut into tissues. She knew where to target her efforts, at least nicking the attacker's femoral artery, judging by the amount of blood on the street. She only had his blood down the outside of one pant leg, showing she was turned sideways to him, making herself a smaller target and protecting her internal organs. She not only kept her head throughout the attack, she kept control of the situation long enough for law enforcement to arrive. Getting that much right wasn't the result of some class at a local community center, usually using whistles and screaming. Someone had taken the time to teach her the basics and be sure they became second nature.

When he had arrived on scene, they had just gotten her into the ambulance to check her over. Eavesdropping, he was relieved to hear her wound was negligible. He waited for the inevitable tears once the adrenalin wore off. Instead, he heard a small stream of shockingly foul language as she learned her sweater was a loss. He hadn't even been sure she knew some of those words!

The one empathy Sherlock had always possessed was the ability to recognize others as adrift as he was. Alienated, at sea. He had known Molly was one the moment they met. Frankly, he couldn't see how she'd gotten the pathology job in the first place. Then she'd walked him through the autopsy he'd been checking on and he knew. She was very, very good at her job. Better, she wasn't thrown off track when he injected his own questions or comments.

They had started down a path that seemed remarkably like friendship until she suddenly appeared to have developed a crush on him. She hung on every word, stammered almost constantly, took on a shrill giggle that arrived at all the wrong times. A plain and somewhat modest wardrobe slowly replaced by garishly cheerful oversized jumpers and her hair pulled back until it made him wince. She seemed to have been easing out of it again, but for a while he had needed to keep a distance between them. It had been a relief when he felt safe enough to tease her again.

He had dismissed the awkward moments at the lab when she had introduced him to "Jim from I.T." as part of her odd behavior right up until Moriarty had stepped from the shadows at the pool. That he had used the pathologist to walk right up to him unnoticed had been irritating enough, but an image from that initial meeting kept coming back to him. For a supposed couple, Molly and "Jim" hadn't been physically affectionate. He would have expected at least hand holding or an embrace. Instead, they only touched once, when "Jim" had rested his hand on her back, his fingers over the center of her upper back. The words from the pool reverberating. "I will burn the heart out of you."

Sherlock had known he shouldn't have left his room for the Christmas party. As long as he could remember, his mind seemed to bounce from one extreme to the other. There was too much going on and his mind reacted like a thundercloud, shooting bolts in all directions, or there wasn't enough going on and in the silence and boredom, things would begin to assail the walls of his mind palace. Far too much was going on. He had tried so hard to keep it under control, not wanting his inner chaos to spill all over the rest.

Then Molly arrived and she was like a lightning rod. He was talking without thinking for a moment about what he was saying, and the location was wrong, the words were wrong, but he couldn't seem to stop himself. He was loathe to remain in his own skin, but then a seeming miracle happened; she bit back! She called him out for it. It had been breathtaking; a flash of the woman he'd suspected may have been there all along. What in the world was she hiding? Why? The apology wasn't enough.

It made the conversation on the way to her apartment that much more interesting. No bad jokes, no unfinished sentences, no waver in her tone. She was far more observant than he had known, yet still didn't insist he provide details. She had followed along, done what she thought he had wanted despite her own misgivings at the morgue. Loyalty wasn't something he was used to dealing with.

And Molly smoked! Despite his grim mood, Sherlock couldn't resist a small smile. He hadn't believed it, had taken several minutes to isolate exactly where the scent was coming from. It must not be something she did often since the smell didn't cling to her coat or her hair, Well, nothing to be done for it. If he had to quit, so did she. Damned if he was going to suffer alone.

Five points of balance, five people he had let get close, to varying degrees. Much like the Lagrange points, three needed almost constant nudging to keep in place while two were fixed and unmovable. Whatever Moriarty or some unknown tried next, he hoped it would all hold together.

One thing he was fairly certain of; he had already had Moriarty's most straightforward attack. The next would be subtle, coming up from the shadows, rolling in from the horizon. "Not with a bang but a whimper." he quoted to the coming dawn.

How had he eaten the whole box? The last time he had eaten an entire box of Jammie Dodgers he had gotten violently ill. Of course, he'd been nine at the time. He felt both ludicrously spoiled and embarrassed, tucking the empty box under his bed where John wouldn't see it. He grabbed his coat. Hopefully, Boots was open. He was out of nicotine patches.


End file.
